Zukertort Opening — Win

Thursday, October 8, 2026 · vs Kotomina · View game on lichess ↗

A theme across this game: on your slow moves (38 seconds, then 104 seconds) you still missed the forcing resource on the board — a centralizing trade, then a pawn break. When you're taking real time on a move, spend it specifically hunting for captures, checks, and pawn breaks before settling on a quiet one.

• ›You took a long 38 seconds here on move 14 and still went with a6, a slow move that doesn't really do much, when bishop to d5 was sitting right there — centralizing the bishop, trading off White's best piece, and clamping down the middle of the board. Instead the position loosened back up and the evaluation swung a full point against you. Long think, but not the right question asked during it.
• ›Knight to e5 looks natural — centralize, grab space — but here it just walks into trouble, where knight to e7 kept things flexible and safer. Lucky for you, White returned the favor one move later playing h3 instead of the much stronger pawn takes e5, so the damage didn't actually stick. Two mistakes in a row basically canceled each other out.
• ›This one you really sat on — almost two minutes — and still chose rook to f6 over the thematic pawn break with f4, which would've cracked the position open in your favor. Again, you got bailed out: White's queen to f2 on the very same move number was also off from the engine's preferred h4. Worth noting though — long think, still missed the forcing idea.
• ›This is the opposite problem — only 7 seconds spent, and c6 was the move that actually held things together, while rook to f7 let your structure get a little loose. Not a calculation failure so much as a rushed one; this is the kind of moment where even a quick ten-second gut check on candidate moves pays off.